Water

I’ve been a recluse. I’ve gone into hiding to avoid dealing with all the messes I’ve created and separated and untangled and hung out there to dry in the sun. It’s not healing, it’s not meditation, it’s not even a break from writing I’m simply lying alive waiting for the darkness that was once my friend. Depression seems to hit and miss me by one person. I’m jealous of the hopelessness I see in other people’s eyes. I want my edge back. We were good together – a good combo, like burger and fries, like cigarettes and coffee, like masturbation and death fantasies. No, maybe not that last one. It’s so easy to want to die, it’s so easy to wipe out like a lonely little flame fluttering in the wind. I wanted to be a limerick, a dirty joke, an old ditty that plays on the radio, the tip of an iceberg. Now I know, I’m a ballad of woe, a cross between Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and water – just water on which other things can float and rise to the surface. I almost didn’t put these thoughts into words because when I do, I become the writer, I give weight to my own existence. But finally I am leaning towards the hopeful, gravitating towards the light and contemplating the burden of those with a weightless existence. It seems like a good beginning on the path towards the end.